


Yield

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Category: Bleach
Genre: M/M, Rape, Vasto Lorde Ichigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 07:07:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17421326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: The reiatsu was so massive he didn't even feel it until the vasto lorde was on top of him.





	Yield

**Author's Note:**

> new fandom energy is really scary. i haven't come up with so many new fics so fast since early homestuck era. no idea how long that'll hold up but hey.
> 
> btw if you usually enjoy my dubcon fantasy porn where it turns out the guy did want it in the end, this is not one of them. there's no gray area here. please exercise caution.

So he was going to die in the sand like a piece of shit. Having lost like a piece of shit and then been protected by the guy who had beat him, like a _pitiful_ piece of shit, and _then_ disregarded by everyone still on the battlefield like the _done_ piece of shit he was.

Okay. Whatever. Fuck the entire universe.

Grimmjow burrowed a little deeper into the bottom of a dune. Sand cascaded across his back, soaked in his blood. His jugular wasn't cut -- didn't spurt. It was just nicked enough to flow out at a good, steady drip. Pressing on it with his hand had done nothing, and then he'd passed out.

He was awake now and it was still bleeding. It made no sense. Did it? Even less blood making it to his brain than before. Why was he...

The reiatsu was so massive he didn't even feel it until the vasto lorde was on top of him.

Oh. Yeah. That'd knock him awake, he thought woozily, staring up at the most humanoid hollow he'd ever seen outside of another arrancar.

Wasn't an arrancar. Mask was intact. 

Eyes were full-out feral. Like a newborn, freshly turned.

Claws. Massive estigma bleeding towards its hole. Goring forward-facing horns, knife-edged.

It leaned down to catch what was left of his collar, lifted him up like a sack of limp shit and something crackled red between its horns. Oh, he thought like a revelation. He wasn't even gonna get _eaten_ , he was gonna get blown up, like a bothersome obstacle, like trash.

He _didn't want to die_. He didn't -- no. _No_. 

He grabbed for the thing's wrist with both hands, kicked out with legs that weighed tons -- no effect. "Let -- _go_. Fucker--"

Pathetic. Couldn't even bite, not at this angle -- oh hell it was charging up, the red turning into a sphere. His brain worked too slow to figure a way out; there was _no_ way out--

Desgarrón. Not enough reishi left. Unstable outside of resurrección. He might blow up his hand, die. Whatever. 

The first flicker he managed to gather cut a slice into the vasto lorde's throat that showed the gape of its trachea. The hole didn't even have time to bleed before it bubbled over white, healed closed. Grimmjow's vision went dark, then light again but blurry now -- _red light_ \-- no, _no_ \--

He kicked and snarled with a spasm of energy come out of nowhere, reserves he didn't have; hot blood spurted out, sluiced through the clumped-up sand, fresh and coppery. Kicked into black legs -- he had to cut through the neck all at once, he was never going to -- had to, _had_ to but high speed regeneration would --

Orange hair. Black shinigami's hakama.

Kurosaki?

He lost his grip on his pitiful amount of gathered energy and it burst out uselessly, scoring spark-burns along the vasto lorde's flank that faded to nothing the second Grimmjow's power dissipated.

Couldn't kill it. Couldn't even hurt it; the throat-stab hadn't even made it flinch... 

\--Distract it.

Hollows were death and hunger; rage and sorrow and grief and hate. Hollows were instinct. 

Still dangling from its fist and not even a second left until the cero flew. Grimmjow's hand shot for the vasto lorde-that-was-Kurosaki's crotch.

He didn't die instantly.

"... Yeah, that's it, you ugly fucker," he rasped, palm pressed tight to the thing's limp dick, watching it watch him back. 

His sword was on the sand a few feet away. He wasn't gonna hurt it enough to be a problem even if he forced out his claws. He could tear its balls out and accomplish nothing but pissing the vasto lorde off.

He curled his fingers around its dick, as much as he could through the pants, gave a firm squeeze; no time to be fucking shy. (He was gonna die with his hand on vasto lorde dick, what the _shit._ )

The red light flickered. Grimmjow licked dry lips, drew in a shaky breath. " _Yeah_. Bet you ain't felt anything that nice in your life. K-Kurosaki." His shoulder hurt so much. Fuck. Why now. "Bet you're a virgin. You're enough of a s-stupid goody-two shoes. Never shot your shot, huh? Aw fuck, it hurts. Yeah, let me pump your dick. God you look so stupid, I bet you're wondering what the fuck."

The blood loss daze had been so nice. Floaty. He missed it. The dick under his hand was plumping up. 

The cero between its horns died down. Maybe when it came it would drop him, and he'd... Not run. He couldn't, and also it would chase. Burrow in the sand, hope by the time it came out of its afterglow it would have forgotten he was there? Hah. Cut its spine while it was coming? 

He didn't have enough power to go for the mask. He just didn't.

He didn't have enough strength to keep his arm up, either; his hand was trembling on the thing's hardening dick, he was gonna get killed over not being able to complete a survival handjob. God he wished he could have died clean in battle and not this shameful bullshit...

No. No, he didn't want to have died in battle. Not even on Kurosaki's blade. But his hand--

"Hey. Kurosaki. Kurosaki, you sad pillow diddler. Would be a great time for you to wake up. Did you die?" 

He felt a flicker of odd anguished rage at the thought. Had someone else killed him, and he'd gone straight to hollowification? And now the annoying shinigami brat was _gone_ \-- and _someone else had killed him_ \-- (And he was a fucking vasto lorde of fucking course, handed to him from the start; Grimmjow hated him, it burned up his throat.)

"Kurosaki," he had time to choke out again, and then he was on his back in the sand, slammed there with the force one may firmly slam a _fucking pillow_ and even that was too much, pain exploding in his shoulder, his neck, the stab wound Kurosaki had left in his lung, before Nnoitra. He blacked out again.

Thighs shoved up, pressing on his chest. Hurt. Couldn't breathe. He squirmed weakly, couldn't shove off. Slapped his hand blindly, made a thin, aspirated noise in his throat.

Bit more space. Pulling. Tearing noises. Didn't hurt. Maybe he was dying faster now and his sense of pain had died first. If he didn't open his eyes he wouldn't have to watch a hollow bite mouthfuls of entrails out of him.

He was a stupid fuck, so he opened his eyes. 

His hakama was destroyed. Oh. So was Kurosaki's. _Oh_. Huh. Belt still on; black cloth shredded in two in front. Ridiculous. Orange pubes, too. Went weird with the bloodless-white of its skin.

 _That_ hard-on wasn't bloodless. Yeah. Shit. He raised his hand -- if it fucked his hand it wouldn't fuck his ass, or stab itself a cunt up his taint -- and couldn't keep it up; it flopped sadly across his chest. He managed to tap himself on the stab wound, too, and made another bitch-noise.

The vasto lorde leaned harder on the hand still fisted in Grimmjow's jacket collar, pressed down on his collarbone. Broken bone shifted under the skin. Grimmjow's breath stopped like he'd been socked in the guts, and then came back in a startle-twitch, a gasp for air he could call nothing but a whimper.

"No -- no," he said breathlessly, tugging on the vasto lorde's wrist to guide it lower, onto his mostly okay ribcage. It didn't budge. "Fuck -- please it hurts -- Kurosaki, c'mon. C'mon, I'll be good, get your hand off, it _hurts_ \--"

A quick, merciless tug; he screamed through clenched teeth. His head swam. Oh, his eyes were closed. Did he want them open? The vasto lorde was still between his legs, hips starting to rock, he could still _feel_ it hovering over him.

It breathed on him; he felt cold on the damp blood streaking his chest and hot on the dry skin in between, how weird, how, oh fuck, too close. He opened his eyes and its face was maybe five inches away, a little on the side so the outside of its horn could brush against Grimmjow's bare cheekbone.

It growled, a low vibration like a faraway earthquake that gained in depth, in anger, layered with the angry-hunting screech of a hollow on the prowl for dinner. 

Grimmjow was _dead_ , deader than when the cero was one second away from shooting a hole through his upper body -- first deliberate bit of communication and it was _this_ , this howl that said 'I lost my heart and will never stop craving it and how dare you still _exist_ , maybe if I make you stop it'll fill back up.'

It caught a grip in his hair and lifted his upper body off the ground. Grimmjow barely had time to see the open maw before he passed out.

... It... didn't hurt that bad, when he came back to himself. Wet warmth. More blood? How many tons of the stuff did he have. Maybe his hollow hole opened onto a pocket dimension of blood. How could he still be bleeding...?

Oh. Nice. Tingly. His head rolled limply on sand. Mm. Soft and warm.

Kurosaki was licking Nnoitra's wound clean. Long inhuman tongue flicking out sometimes to get rid of sand, fastidious like a cat... Wasn't a cat though. Maybe a lizard. Maybe some kind of flightless dragon. 

Sometimes it bit its tongue to lick long trails of its own blood into Grimmjow's wound. Huh. Its reishi was...

White bubbling, slow-moving. Tingly. In the corner of his eye Grimmjow could only see glimpses of the long, deep slice. Not very deep now. Not even really a scar left.

... Could high-speed regeneration really do that...? Be... be shared like that? Huh. The bone didn't even hurt underneath. He vaguely, distantly hoped it hadn't healed crooked.

It didn't hurt. Hardly at all. Ached, pulsing quietly with his heartbeat. He could have floated away from how heavy the previous pain had felt, how light he was now it was gone. Dizzy with blood loss and he felt himself go in long falling spirals every time he closed his eyes. It didn't hurt. His lung still did, but Kurosaki hadn't struck to kill back then. He vaguely considered trying to talk the vasto lorde into licking him there, then got stuck trying to figure out the horns. Hm. Nah. He'd get stabbed again if they tried...

A low rumble. He opened his eyes, met intelligent, inhuman gold-on-black.

Then his thighs were being hauled up to its waist, and then a clawed hand was catching a fistful of the hair at the back of his head, forcing his throat exposed, and then --

He knew better; he still fought, kicking blind to get himself off that stabbing pain, hands raking ineffectually down that black-streaked chest. His nails didn't even leave scratches, the white bubbling following his fingers.

"Fucking shit, Kurosaki, that hurts!" he snarled. One of his thighs was held up against the vasto lorde's chest, knee thrown over its shoulder. It pressed down on him trying to get balls-deep and he strained to keep it off his chest wound, but he couldn't, his legs and abs were trembling with blood loss and reiryoku depletion; every second he lost another inch until he was folded in two under its weight.

The pain in his ass wasn't too bad compared to being squished into his stab wound, he stupidly thought, and then it wrenched his head to the side and bit down on his freshly healed shoulder.

Punching at its head did nothing but tighten its teeth in a spasm, make it growl, oh fuck it was gonna bite a chunk right out of him, it was gonna fuck _and_ eat him, fucking dumbass plan, "distract it with dick," fucking foolproof -- he struggled and all he got for his trouble was a heavy thrust like a punch at his organs from the inside. Then another, and a third, and its teeth finally let go.

It licked the wound clean too, Grimmjow noticed between gritted teeth and diaphragm-punch gasps, but it didn't bleed into it to heal it pretty.

Did it. Did it want that one to scar? Instead of. He couldn't hope. He couldn't. 

If it was leaving marks, did that mean it wanted them to be seen, afterwards? What was the point of marking up a corpse that was just gonna dissipate? Maybe there was no point, maybe it was too instincts-fucked to plan that far, he couldn't let himself count on mercy. He clenched a hand on the vasto lorde's shoulder, more to brace than to try to push it off again. Gritted his teeth, took its dick. It fucked like a war hammer, blow after relentless blow.

He'd asked for it. Like a moron, but there had been no other -- if he survived, that was fine. That would be worth it. If he survived -- he'd had worse. There was no sneering here, no humiliating -- no deliberate hurt. Apart from the biting. He was trapped with his throat out and bared like an offering, folded up and surrounded and _caught_ but as it went nothing else happened, no sadism, no sneers. Sometimes it would growl from the belly on up but almost more in pleasure than in threat.

"God, let up on rearranging my guts already," he complained, mostly to hear himself sound casual, untouched. His voice shook a little bit, but not too bad. It was cool. He was cool. Just had to wait it out. He closed his eyes; his head swam. "You fucking vandal."

His hands and feet were cold, and his back, pressed to heat-leeching sand. The vasto lorde's body was all boiling warmth against his front. Inside him...

Long hair trailed over strong shoulders, tickled his throat, his chest, making him shiver. An orange waterfall. How weird. Then again Grimmjow's hair got stupidly long in resurrección and who even knew why; just one of these things. Maybe this wasn't actually Kurosaki's base hollow form.

His sword was right there, though. Hm...

Its. Its sword. This wasn't Kurosaki. It was just a hollowed-out version.

"You gonna -- come at some point?" he muttered, eyelids heavy. "Asking for the -- friend that's up my ass. Not your dick -- the other one. Hhff -- shit."

It was warm inside him, too. Hot. Kurosaki's dick wasn't huge -- normal-sized, maybe a bit on the bigger side. The way he used it felt like Grimmjow was getting fisted. Relentless pressure on his inner walls, constant back-and-forth chafing his entrance white-hot. His prostate was getting it too, waking up slow and reluctant but waking up all the same.

The vasto lorde bit him again on the meat of his shoulder and Grimmjow slapped it right in the ear by pure reflex. Next thing he knew his wrist was being slammed in the sand by a crushing pressure, the articulation popping a little under the strength of its grip. The vasto lorde got as in his face as it could with the horns and snarled -- howled, two-toned; how dare _food_ rebel.

Grimmjow wasn't food, hadn't considered himself food since before he turned adjuchas. He still froze, heart hammering wild with terror.

Keeping his hand trapped, it pressed its body to his, somehow finding space between his legs for full belly-to-belly contact, for fever-hot skin to cover the whole span of his hollow hole. A sudden surge of vengeful thrusting made him gasp; he didn't dare give even a token protest this time around. 

He'd thought he was caught before; now he was wrapped up like a rabbit with an anaconda. He wriggled, testing the grip -- the vasto lorde's flat belly pressed heavy and fever-hot on his crotch, muscles upon muscles rolling and coiling together under smooth hollow-white skin over his --

The booming laugh turned that strange rising warmth into ice. "Oh my _god_ , Jaegerjaquez, you piece of trash."

Eyes open painfully wide, Grimmjow looked up the dune. No. Oh no. He hadn't even felt him -- how could he have, smothered by Kurosaki's reiatsu -- no. Being -- seen like that. Legs in the air, utterly _helpless_. 

"... Yammy."

Above him Kurosaki had gone still. His hands tightened on Grimmjow's hair and his wrist, though; he pushed his body down hard enough to drive the breath out of Grimmjow. His dick was root-deep inside Grimmjow and unmoving. He tilted his head, sending long orange strands fluttering across the mask. 

"You fucking serious there. Mister King, getting railed by a feral--"

A pulse of power, and Kurosaki's sword flew to his hand; he rolled back, bringing Grimmjow along, slashing up -- the backlash of power crackled like electricity against Grimmjow's skin, weaker with so little reiatsu left to fuel his hierro, and he flinched away from it. He realized a second later he'd tucked his face against Kurosaki's chest. Then he -- dizzy, too fast, he was standing, kind of, he was empty and held tight against Kurosaki's side with a single arm as Kurosaki stood, one foot forward. 

Very clearly putting himself between Yammy and Grimmjow.

Did he. What was this. Was it just getting possessive over his hole, or was it -- the same, the fucking _same_ , shielding him from Nnoitra on reflex --

He didn't have time to fall. One blink -- he was standing alone, shreds of hakama fluttering down his legs, Yammy with his eyes wide and his grin wider like he had found the best joke in the universe and it was the Sexta Espada.

One blink -- the vasto lorde standing right under Yammy's chin, inside his reach.

One blink -- no Getsuga Tenshou, just an upwards slash. Yammy's head was falling open, mask and skull, face and brains. A mile away, a cliff crumbled from the backlash. The dune bowed inwards, spraying sand everywhere; Grimmjow flinched, lifting his arm to protect his eyes, and swayed, his knees buckling as they finally registered his own weight.

He didn't fall. The vasto lorde caught him, a hand on each elbow. 

Grimmjow was still taller. What a joke. 

What a joke. 

"Hey -- Kurosaki?" His voice was oddly quiet. He hadn't meant to make it sound like that. "You in there?"

A long golden look, the mask expressionless. He was still hard, porcelain-white skin flushed an unreal, artificial pink-red, veins a faded blue. There was a little streak of Grimmjow's blood on it, but a lot less than he would have thought, all things considered. Really, a negligible amount.

Grimmjow curled his hand up to press his fingers to it, the tip of his pointer finger resting just under the head. He didn't have enough slack to take it in hand.

Yanked forward, belly to belly. He went, knees failing to lock. Teeth at the side of his neck, drawing blood -- just a bit. 

He slid down Kurosaki's body just a little, unable to catch himself; wasn't punished for not staying where he'd been put, at least. The vasto lorde's hands swept around, caught him under the thighs -- fucking lifted him right off his feet; Kurosaki just leaned back to balance them, clawed hands catching a grip on his ass to haul him up. Needle-tips piercing skin. 

He didn't bother being difficult when he was lowered back onto that dick; he angled his hips so it would slip right back in. It caught a little at his rim and then Kurosaki thrust up and the head popped in; he let Grimmjow sink down slowly, legs around his waist.

God. He'd never been fucked like that in any of his lives, he was sure. Standing up, out in the open, held like he weighed nothing, and not a single thing to brace on that wasn't Kurosaki's body. 

He rested his elbows on Kurosaki's shoulders, cautiously, then when that provoked no reaction he let his head roll forward, boneless. Kurosaki was fucking him in short thrusts now, less with his own hips and more by catching handfuls of Grimmjow's ass and rocking him, lifting him up, pushing him down. Slower, shorter strokes. Pressing against entirely new areas. 

"I can't believe you one-shotted Yammy," he mumbled, eyes closed. "Dunno if I wanna think it was for my honor or just because he was one ugly bastard. Aw fuck, it feels nice. Don't kill me when you're done, I'll cry or something."

He wrapped his arms a little tighter around Kurosaki's -- the vasto lorde's -- neck, tucked his face into it. He -- it didn't kill Grimmjow for it.

It toppled them in the sand again. Grimmjow went, boneless. Kurosaki's sword stabbed down right by his head. 

Grimmjow didn't need his hair pulled this time to offer his throat, head rolling back, eyes closed. He left his wrists crossed at the back of the vasto lorde's neck, vaguely daydreaming of a spine-deep slash of desgarrón -- but it was too late and he was too tired and he... didn't want to do that. He wanted... to let the vasto lorde finish, and wander off and then Grimmjow could find a den to sleep in safe until he could heal, and then nobody would mention that ever again. Kurosaki would get better and wouldn't remember, wouldn't know. Nobody else would find out. Just let it happen until it was done and then forget. Heal stronger -- ah, he wished he could have eaten Yammy, he bet the jerk was dissipating already -- fight Kurosaki again, even with his unfair...

...Unfair... 

Kurosaki was moving faster now, staying deep like he didn't want to pull out more than two inches ever; filling Grimmjow with hard flesh and reishi and his _presence_ , refusing to let Grimmjow's ass forget the shape of his dick. He breathed harder, masked maw open; a long tongue flicked across serrated teeth, licked a stripe through the overlapping bite marks he'd left on Grimmjow's shoulder. Grimmjow shivered.

"...You getting close?" he made himself ask. He wanted to get done, right? That was what he wanted. Wasn't like he was getting used to it, wasn't like the warmth in his crotch tingled like he would have been hard, too, without the blood loss. Like he was still halfway stiff anyway.

Next to his ear something splintered with a sharp little crack. Grimmjow's eyes flew open; his legs tightened. 

The vasto lorde made a sound that wasn't a growl, some kind of breathy, throaty... noise. Caging Grimmjow's hips in clawed hands, he lifted them until Grimmjow was on his shoulder blades, angled them up, thrust down like he was trying to hammer Grimmjow into the dune. Grimmjow gasped, the breath driven out of him.

"Aw, shit--"

Another cracking noise. 

He opened his eyes and watched a fissure spread down the vasto lorde's mask, across the forehead estigma. At the next thrust, a piece fell off, and another -- more and bigger as his movements grew frenzied.

He tightened the grasp of his fingers, punched a couple claw tips through Grimmjow's skin -- entirely, Grimmjow was sure, on accident -- maw open and panting openly now, breath rasping and feet churning the sand behind him, and then he leaned down to breathe on Grimmjow's face.

Grimmjow had a second to think 'he's going to bite down' and then the horn got in the way, planted tip-down in the sand. Kurosaki growled his annoyance and twitched his head and it broke off like bad pottery, tumbled on Grimmjow's shoulder and fell, all the razor-edged length of it, like a knocked-down tree.

"Ah -- _fuck_ ," Kurosaki (the real one) said in a rasp, and came shuddering inside him. The mask rained down in fragments, glancing off Grimmjow's cheekbone and his own mask, a piece of jaw with teeth resting in the hollow of his neck. He stared up, baffled. Kurosaki slumped, folded down until his forehead pressed against Grimmjow's collarbone. His body went loose on top of him -- his reiatsu dropping like a stone and _shit_ , was he gonna fall asleep right there? Grimmjow could only summon up a vague, helpless annoyance about it.

He was heavy on Grimmjow, but warm too. Nice. Safe. Oh fuck, he was _safe_. Grimmjow was safe, wasn't going to die, Kurosaki in his right mind would _never_ \--

A stutter of breath. Sudden tension. Grimmjow tensed up, too, in reaction. And then Kurosaki pushed himself up on his arms -- had to take his hands off Grimmjow's ass first -- pushed himself up and stared down (gold and swirling black) and his newly peach-colored skin started trying to go gray. 

"Grimmjow...?" he said, voice cracking, as his (black-edged brown) eyes roamed across Grimmjow's exhausted face, the bites, the layers of blood in various stages of drying.

The sheer, heartbroken horror on his face when his eyes (human, _human_ ) reached Grimmjow's crotch and he realized his dick was still in him was...

No, Grimmjow thought, dizzy and tired and just... Not up for a freakout. Nah. Gonna pass on that.

"You planning on cutting and running before I get mine?" he drawled, rolling his hips lazily, ankles locked at the small of his back. He just wanted to lie down and sleep but he -- didn't. Couldn't. The sick look on Kurosaki's face was. No. He'd have punched it off if he still could.

"I -- what?"

"We were in the middle of _somethin'_ , shinigami." 

"But I," Kurosaki said, long hair falling off like ashes as his eyes returning with guilty fascination to Grimmjow's crotch, the drunken sprawl of his half-hard dick across blue curls. "I didn't -- wasn't. What?"

Grimmjow was really not sure if he actually wanted to come -- or if that would even be possible with the state of his body. But he refused to beg off first. That way lay pitying looks and suffocating bullshit guilt and -- Kurosaki curling in on himself, becoming... smaller. Duller. More crushed in. 

"Mmh?" he hummed, making sure to sound careless. If after Grimmjow survived all this, _Kurosaki_ broke..

"... Did I hurt you?"

"Pfft." He curled up a corner of his mouth, gave him a mocking, heavy-lidded look. "You actually healed my shoulder. Look at this. Not a single trace left of Nnoitra's bullshit."

"But then I bit all over it!" Kurosaki leaned closer to peer at it, hands hovering and not daring to touch; his soft dick slipped out with a small gush of come and they both shuddered. "Oh god. Oh fuck." 

His eyes welled up; his throat moved like he was two seconds away from throwing up. Grimmjow stopped breathing. 

"I'm _sorry_ , Grimmjow, I'm sorry--"

Grimmjow smacked him in the side of the head, swift and loud, palm wide open. 

"--Ow?"

Bewildered was better. It wasn't hard to catch a grip on orange hair and yank him down, because Kurosaki didn't resist even by reflex. Grimmjow bit down on his lower lip, growling with the sharp, discordant undertone of hollow to make sure he had his undivided attention. 

"You wipe that look off your face or I'll bite it off." He bit Kurosaki's mouth again, less harsh, sucked the beading blood off it. "Don't wanna hear it, don't wanna see it, you take pity on me and I won't even fight you next time, I won't even _greet_ you, I'll just kill you off-hand. Got it?"

"Got it," Kurosaki rasped, head bowed under his fist.

He looked... Anguished still, but less brittle. Bit firmer. Didn't meet his eyes but did stare down Grimmjow's chin like it owed him money. Which. Good. Grimmjow sighed out through his nose and let himself relax on the sand, hand falling open with a last half-hearted slap to the back of Kurosaki's head for the road.

"You had better not take it like that next time we fight," he grumbled under his breath. God he was sore. And sleepy. 

"--Um. Take it...?"

"Lettin' me slap you around." He cracked an eye open. Oh yeah, he'd been closing them. "Fuck you still doin' here, don't you have weakling assholes to rescue?"

Kurosaki's voice cracked; he still forced out, "Hey, don't call them that, if they really were assholes you'd be included by default." Even met his eyes, fleetingly. Grimmjow's lip curled up in something like a sneer and something like a smile. "Do you _want_ me to rescue you?"

Grimmjow snorted. "Oh, you just try it."

The fucker _would_ , if he asked. The sarcasm in his voice was so thin it was see-through. God, Grimmjow hated him so much.

He hadn't groped vasto lorde dick just to lay here like a free buffet and die after all, though.

"Just find me somewhere to den up that randy menos won't wander through and we're square," he mumbled, eyes closed once again.

It was mortifying to be so helpless, to admit to it. It was even worse when Kurosaki said "okay" and then hemmed and hawed for like a whole minute before saying he'd have to help him up, to touch him, fucking carry him in all but name because hell if Grimmjow could stand any better now than before he'd had his ass nailed to the dunes and lost half his weight in blood.

He pretended to move his legs when Kurosaki was walking him across the sand but they both knew who was doing most of the work. Probably passed out a couple times too, whole minutes gone to blackness and quiet. Started out holding onto Pantera and then some time later realized his hand was empty since he wasn't sure when and Kurosaki had it, in the fist that went under Grimmjow's armpit to hold him against his side. They'd have moved faster if he'd been straight up _carried_. 

"Is this good enough?"

Some lone watchtower stood before them, halfway crumbled, a dune crawling up its side. Far away from the bulk of Las Noches, with an actual door he could block, and no windows.

"Great," he said without heat. "Put me down."

Kurosaki was going to carry him right inside, he could tell. Fucking tuck him in. He caught the doorjamb as they went through, bringing him to a stop.

"Here's good enough. _Put me down_."

For a moment there he thought he was gonna have to punch a bitch. 

Kurosaki gave him a long, too serious look, and then let go. Grimmjow gripped the doorjamb tighter to keep himself standing as his legs protested having to hold his weight. The rags that used to be his pants had long since dropped off; there he stood, dressed in a pointless jacket and long streaks of dry blood and come. He could have murdered Kurosaki for seeing him this way if he'd been anyone else, if he'd even glanced down. But no, the asshole only looked at his face, expression grave and intense and fucking _sad_ , passed him Pantera like it was a candle for his wake.

"Next time we fight," Grimmjow said slowly, voice coming out a low rasp, "when I win I'm fucking you."

"...Okay," Kurosaki said, like he knew what Grimmjow was thinking -- that this asshole had the makings of a fucking emperor of all hollow-kind right there at his fingertips and Grimmjow had already gotten curbstomped when he wasn't even tapping much into it.

Grimmjow hated nothing more than feeling weak and inferior and _scared_ , than knowing Kurosaki could tell. 

He hated it, and he wasn't gonna _stand for it._

Same objective as always -- just a little clearer now on the obstacles he'd have to get through.

He leaned in, swaying just a little, draped both arms around Kurosaki's neck when the guy twitched as if wanting to catch him. Summoned a smirk somewhere from the depths of himself, the dregs of his strength; purred right in his face, "I'm going to _ruin_ your lily-white ass. Get ready for it."

A beat of silence. No movement made to catch his sides, to steady him; he was ferociously glad of it. 

" _If_ you beat me," Kurosaki replied eventually, the ghost of a matching smirk flickering briefly on his bitten-up lip. Grimmjow snorted, a single corner of his mouth still quirked up, heaved himself off and back against the doorjamb, leaning against it pretend-casually. It was cold without Kurosaki's body heat. Fucking defective hierro.

"Alright, buzz off. Don't you have shinigami things to do? Aizen to murder, or some shit."

"Yeah, I should probably get on that," Kurosaki agreed almost casually, and smiled a hair's breadth wider. 

Another long look; he opened his mouth to speak, closed it, gave a sudden, stiff nod, lower lip trembling suspiciously. Then he turned away and was gone in a flash, sand spraying against Grimmjow's legs.

Grimmjow didn't slide down the doorjamb and onto the floor, but he wasn't sure how. Slowly, he turned; stepped inside, a hand on the wall, felt for the door mechanism, a heavy slab of stone. It gritted against sand, closed only most of the way. 

Oh well. No way to fix that, he'd pass out first, but nothing bigger than a rabbit would fit through. He would probably survive a hollow that size. And his spiritual pressure was so weak no arrancar or shinigami would notice him unless they landed on top of him. He followed the wall to the spiral staircase and fell in slow motion onto his knees, a barely controlled topple into the sand packed under the stairs.

He would survive this. He would. Clutching his sword in his fist, he curled up on his side, the scabbed-over bite marks turned toward the sky, and waited to heal.


End file.
